Now that I gave up on the chance of making it to this year's Spring Thing competition with my game, I've been blasting through my backlog of interesting arty sounding games. This week's fare was Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons, here's again my Mood Pieces entry about it. This was a surprising experience - controlling two characters at the same time with one controller worked as a gameplay solution, and storywise this was a rather impressive game. In the beginning I was more than a little meh, since I thought it was yet another adventure in a bland fantasy world, but nope - it was a faerytale world in the non-Disney-fluff style, which means things can get nasty. And nasty they did get.

Much as I don't really get the rage about some games' paywalls (if you got the game for less than a dollar or for free, I don't see the problem with charging you a pittance to get to the next few levels after you've played for a couple of hours), there's a good and a bad way to do it. And there's always got to be, y'know, a GAME behind it.And good lord, if 70 dollars doesn't even let you play the whole game normally, then you're DEFINITELY doing it wrong.

Alright so here are my thoughts on the games I've beaten so far this year

Risk of Rain - Fantastic game, I had a lot of fun playing through this rogue like. I've played a bit of local co-op, never having any luck connecting with the online multiplayer and while it's good, the single player experience is much better. I find the difficulty just right though I can see how some would be daunted. Good music and the controls are pretty tight in general. The classes are well varied and none of them are too unbalanced(with the exception of maybe the Engineer)

DrillDozer - I wish that Pokemon wasn't quite the money printer it was so that Game Freak had more of a chance to make other games. This game had great controls, really fun platforming, bright graphics, a nice light hearted story and fun boss fights. Plus a built in rumble pack in the cartridge! Good music as well, though nothing that I can say really had me wanting to check it out once I was finished playing.

Metroid Fusion - My first metroid game. The depth of the controls is really quite amazing as is the game in general. I found the final boss to be something of a disappointment but besides that, heartily recommended. I'm still on the hunt for a Super Metroid cartridge, which I imagine will be even better. I sure hope Nintendo eventually gives Metroid a little more 2D love.

Super Mario 3D World - The levels in this game are fantastic. There's so much variety as to what you're trying to accomplish level to level, while offering a substantial enjoyment, it isn't very challenging until the bonus stages at which point it becomes very, very difficult. It's Mario game, there's a lot to collect, replay and perfect. The four player coop is a bit misleading as it seems great in theory, but in practice it's a little too chaotic with the 3D angles and shifting camera. 2 player co-op is a really good time though.

Dust: An Elysian Tail - I think that I give this game a hard time considering that it was made by only one guy. That said, while the graphics were nicely polished, I felt that the combat was very repetitive, the platforming was half-baked and difficult due to the regularly ill defined corners of platforms. The final boss was just a trial to get through and I found that the entire story felt generally weak. I can't recommend this game.

Painkiller - Fuck yeah. I had to turn the metal off after a while, but the ambient music was more than enough to create a good atmosphere for shooting a lot of different kinds of enemies with a lot of ridiculous guns. I ignored the story which was really a flimsy excuse chaining the awesome levels together and man, was the design cool. Alleyways and shipyard ports and old temples in hills and giant cathedrals and opera houses. I liked it for both it's brevity and it's stripped down gameplay. Shoot dudes, so you can shoot more dudes.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike - I've made it my mission to play all the Advance Wars games from start to finish this year. I've always liked the series but never played them through(always find them too hard when I was younger). Now I've got the skill and the tenacity, I plowed through what I understand is the easiest of the series but still really enjoyed it. Intelligent Systems would make me quite happy if they made another game, but Fire Emblem seems to be taking their priorities, which is fine by me as well.

Guacamelee - Basically succeeds where Dust failed. It's full of cheeky references, which can seem a bit fan wanky and it is, but it never really gets in the way of the gameplay or the story, so I didn't find it to be that annoying. The gameplay is very tight, with a nice idea of using the combat moves to aid in platforming, which is where I thought the game found it's strength. The writing was also very charming and the music was fairly good as well. A good amount of replay value in collecting all the hidden goodies as well.

Yeeeah, regarding the whole F2P backlash now, regarding EA's Dungeon Keeper, the pooch is really crying for more vaseline. I saw some extremely negative comments and had to try for myself, mostly because I loved the original game to pieces. It looks like it's as bad as they say. I was literally two minutes out of the tutorial when the first "wait for four hours to excavate this block" happened. Luckily it was just one minute to uninstall.

Sooooo... Rust or DayZ? DayZ appeals more to me on the surface as it's more... earthy if that makes any sense. I like the low-tech Minecrafty nature of it and building shelters, but what do you folks think? Who's played both or either?

Re: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons: All I can say about it without spoiling anything is that it's a game where the gameplay is more just there to tell the story than to function as a challenging game, outside of a handful of occasions. Thing is, though, it really does work well. Great little game, finishable in a couple of sittings. Just do yourself a favor if you haven't played it, and don't read anything more about it... Go into it as blindly as possible, as Vornaskotti did.

Apparently I'm the only one who believes Dong Nguyen's reason for pulling Flappy Bird from iOS/Android- too much attention, not worth the life disruption. Once you've made enough money (and there is such a thing, no matter what the over-consumptive like to believe) it's better to walk away and get some semblance of sanity restored. From the little I've seen, the developer's actions to this point are all internally consistent with someone who doesn't want this kind of attention.

I was going to finally download and play the game seeing as it's gone tomorrow, but my girlfriend is the one with an iPad and she's in a giant Carnivale marathon right now. Ah well.

Finished the 3D version of Shinobi 3 (old Genesis/Mega Drive game) on my 3DS. It's a lot of fun, even if the controls can be a bit unintuitive at times. The main offender there is the double-jump, which has a tendency to be finicky about being triggered, and which can be life or death at times.

When I say "3D version" I mean that it's the same game, except that they've added graphical layers of 3D-ness to its backgrounds and stuff, and they've added optional control options that make use of all the 3DS buttons. The 3D-ness works well, and mostly doesn't get in the way of the gameplay (except for a couple of occasions where they put spikes on the wrong layer, making them appear as if they're safe even though they're not). I've got the 3D version of Sonic 1, too (which adds a spindash if you want it), and it's making me eager for an eventual 3D version of Sonic 2.

I did manage to sneak in a quick round of Flappy Bird and, now that I've played it, I kind of get its popularity. It's not a great game, just a remake of a million other similar flash games, but the speed with which you can try again is just this side of zero seconds, and the individual attempts are quick enough that you can play a bunch of times in a very short period. Throw in the social aspect, mixed in "it was going to happen to something and this is what the Capricious Wheel of Chance landed on", and you've got a social gaming movement.

Played for 30 minutes, got a score of 12, decided I was happy with that and called it good.

Got a review code for the site I write for and gave it away to an editor because I'm Vita-less. I'd love to have reviewed it but every expense in the world is showing up on the first three months of this year, so new hardware is right out.

So, the members of the GDC awards committee have decided to honour Anita Sarkeesian for her video series on the games industries crappy overuse of damsel tropes.

This is a good thing, because this is a discussion the industry needs to be having. I personally think the videos themselves aren't all that great, but the fact someone is willing to step up and take the subject on deserves recognition.

Of course this being the internet there's lots of anonymous nastiness out there being, well, horrible about it.